Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Silverado (Columbia, 1985)

A Western-lover's Western

In a post-Heaven's Gate period of drought when A-Westerns weren’t being made (Cimino had
almost sunk the genre single-handed), Clint Eastwood and the Kasdans (praise be
to them) revived the cowboy film half way through the decade with two
first-class 1985 pictures, Pale Rider and Silverado. You could go
to a movie theater and see a proper Western again.

They are both classic, straight-down-the-line Western pictures with no overly
artistic or psychological pretensions (perhaps Pale Rider a little more than Silverado)
and they are both a Western fan’s Westerns. Silverado is the more fun,
the more full of energy. The whole crew must have had a whale of a time making
it. Lawrence Kasdan (director, co-writer, co-producer) said, “We wanted to
remind people of the pleasures that we had had in Westerns growing up.”

They
succeeded. He and his brother Mark’s love
of the genre shines through. Lawrence wroteRaiders of the Lost Ark with
George Lucas and Silverado too crackles
with action and fun. The movie packs
in all the traditional features of the Western of the golden age and yet
manages to do it without clichés or corniness. It comes across instead as
affectionate quotation. Peter
Stack wrote in the San Francisco
Chronicle that the film "delivers elaborate gun-fighting scenes,
legions of galloping horses, stampeding cattle, a box canyon, covered wagons,
tons of creaking leather and even a High Noonish duel. How it manages to run
the gamut of cowboy movie elements without getting smart-alecky is
intriguing." Roger Ebert in the Chicago
Sun-Times wrote, "This is a story, you will agree, that has been told
before. What distinguishes Kasdan's telling of it is the style and energy he
brings to the project."

Ian Freer in Empire thought the film was the
"kind of picture that makes you want to play cowboys the moment it is
over." He said, "Whereas many of the westerns from the ‘70s try a
revisionist take on the genre, Silverado offers a wholehearted embracing
of western traditions." More reviews here if you want.

Visually, it is outstanding. As so often in more recent Westerns, the production design (Ida Ransom) is authentic in detail. They built the biggest ever Western town near Santa Fe for it. The
photography is by John Bailey, an admirer of Georgia O’Keefe paintings. The
film is shot in glorious winter New Mexico light, often with ultra-long
shadows, and is stunning. There are wonderful pinkish South West landscapes. It’s
Bruce Surtees quality. It’s that good. This movie glows.

And to be
fair to Heaven’s Gate (I do try) that
was photographically outstanding too, perhaps Vilmos Zsigmond’s finest work. So
what with Surtees’s Pale Rider shot
up in Idaho, the 80s sure produced some magnificent Westerns to look at. With Heaven’s Gate, of course, that’s all
there is. (You see, I told you I was fair).

The Bruce Broughton music in Silverado
is also superb: classic, stirring, traditional, quite Star Wars-y in a way.

The acting
is terrifically good. The four protagonists, (left to right above) Danny Glover,
Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn and Kevin Costner, are proper Western heroes, tough,
strong and decent. Supporting cast are also enjoyable: we might mention in
particular John Cleese as the canny English sheriff, Rosanna Arquette as a
tough farmer woman, Linda Hunt as the saloon keeper (she’s terrific) and
especially Brian Dennehy as the corrupt sheriff of Silverado. He’s the smiling
rogue, Robert Preston, Richard Boone and Brian Donlevy all rolled into one.

One of the great tragedies of Silverado, nay, of the whole history of the Western, was the
decision by Mr. Kasdan, woe be unto him, to cut out the scene where Kevin Kline,
having just shot a man who had stolen his hat (fair enough), kicks up the Stetson
from the floor in a saloon with the toe of his boot and it lands on his head.
Is that cool or what? Luckily you can see it in an out-take on the DVD.
Majestic.

The opening and closing shots are classics: a silent, dark cabin that explodes
in noise and light, with Glenn walking out of a Fordian doorway (affectionately
quoted) so that we see a whole panoramic New Mexico before us; and at the end
of the movie a classic showdown with Kline, in Gary CooperHigh Noon
costume, in another reference to a classic Western, standing in the main street
with a shining white church behind him and bad Dennehy, in frock coat, against
the backdrop of bleak desert.

There’s a Fordian dance which is shot up by raiders (exactly as in Pale Rider, being filmed at the same
time). There’s a rancher/nester conflict theme, it’s got horses and gunfights
and great saloons and fisticuffs, there’s a stampede, hell, it’s even got
tumbleweed. I love it.